If you think this series is grueling to read, think about me having to write this s–t! If I thought I’d spend part of my retirement writing recaps of a TV show followed by insane fans, I’d have probably said, “Good idea!” Nevertheless, my words are screaming to be heard. I’m on an IV of Red Bull so I can get the job done. One of the side effects might be uncontrolled silliness and snark, but that is no different than my usual writing, so…..
Everything is just plain sad about the upcoming episodes, but I will endeavor to find something inappropriate to say about most of it. So just “get over it!”
Episode 207
Initially, we find that Claire is in the 1950’s talking to a little red headed girl about a blue heron she saw in Scotland. I already addressed this in episode 204, so I won’t belabor this scene. However, it blends into a picture of Claire laying on a bed in the the hospital with Mother Hildegarde and M. Fornay (Ew!) trying to save her and her unborn child. She still has her silk dress on and she is covered in blood. Things don’t look good, but she is staring at the same blue heron flying overhead. (Perhaps Mother Hildegarde has gone a little heavy on the Opium?) You know, I had a family of herons walk up my driveway today. I hope it was just the Red Bull and that I didn’t overeat the poppyseed muffins this morning.
Claire wakes up and sees she is back in the hospital and not flying with the Blue Heron. She looks around frantically and says, “Where’s my baby?” Mother Hildegarde comforts her and says that the baby was born dead. (I guess she wasn’t right to tell Claire not to worry when she was bleeding last night. I noticed that Bouton was no where around for Mother Hildegarde to consult. Perhaps if he had been there, he would have put Claire on bed rest only).
Mother Hildegarde has taken the opportunity to baptize the dead baby so she can be buried in hallowed ground and named her “Faith”. She tells Claire that it was illegal to do so and they must tell no one or she might get bitch slapped by the Pope. Claire asks for Jamie but no one has heard from him. Claire tells Mother Hildegarde that he broke his promise and she will never forgive him. But Claire is very ill, with puerperal fever, which is fatal in the 18th century. Mother Hildegarde brings in the priest for last rites. During the night, Master Raymond sneaks into the hospital. (Now if that doesn’t scare Claire to death, nothing will). He rummages around in Claire’s who-who and cures her of the infection.
Master Raymond tells Claire why he calls her “Madonna”. It isn’t because she’s “Like a Virgin” or a Mother. He says she has a blue aura. This explains the Smurf look back in 204. Claire’s aura was “all over the place!” He assures her he will see her again, just like in that movie. You know the one.
After several weeks, Fergus talks Claire into going home. Even though she was told Jamie couldn’t come to see her because he is in the Bastille, she hasn’t forgiven him. (I suspect this is how “Tough Love” started. “Let him rot around in the Bastille awhile. That’ll teach him!). Nevertheless, she returns home to some pretty sad servants.
That night after Fergus brushes her hair….she finds him crying in his attic room. He explains that Milord discovered Black Jack Randall raping him at Hoors R Us. Jamie challenged the Englishman to a duel. Fergus feels guilty because he is responsible for losing the only father he has ever known. Claire comforts him.
Claire realizes why Jamie broke his promise and sets out to get him released tout suite. She asks Mother Hildegarde to arrange a private meeting with the King, so she can beg him to set Jamie free. She is not new at getting Jamie out of jail, so she ‘s sure she will be successful. She will do what she must.
Claire gets on the fast-track to meet with the King. The first thing he does is give Claire some Chocolate and an orange from his 1,000 orange trees in his Orangerie. He seems unsure of himself, like he is trying to impress her. (Louie Baby, you live in Versailles, you have every luxury, people fall all over themselves just to watch you poop, YOU’RE THE FOOKING KING! Do you really think you need an orange to impress her?) Nevertheless, after he talks to her about her two wedding rings, he decides she is an admirable, loyal woman and vows to cuckold her husband as soon as possible. Claire makes her request to get Jamie released from the Bastille. King Louis admires her pale white skin and says, “No wonder they call you La Dame Blanche”. Images of Crainesmuir Kirk flash before her eyes and she thinks she may be on M. Fornay’s short list. Instead the King asks her to do him a small favor. (Ah, here comes the “lie with” Mother Hildegarde warned Claire about). King Louis asks her to help him with a special problem and Claire looks over at the bed.
King Louis surprises us all and leads her into the Star Chamber, a type of Observatory/Secret Conference Room at Versailles. M. Fornay is waiting inside with some strange looking guards. Then Sanger Man and Master Raymond are brought in by even stranger looking guards. M. Fornay reads the charges against them for Practicing the Dark Arts Without a License. He empowers Claire to determine their guilt or innocence.
She tells the King that all men have a dark side, for without it we would not know the light, but Sanger Man is the darkest of all! He becomes very angry. He admits he poisoned her and says she is a witch because she survived! The gall of that woman! How dare she!
The King brings in his pet snakes, Lenny and Squiggy, because he knows that the guilty will be bitten if they handle them. (Of course, that happens with those who are not guilty,too, so it’s not foolproof.) Claire, who is not partial to serpents, suggests that she give the two men a taste of the “poison” she was given. If they survive she asks that the King spare them. She grabs some herbal liquid that is not lethal and pours some into a cup. She gives it to Master Raymond, who knows what she is doing, and he takes the “poison”. He bends over in agony, but appears to recover and survive. Claire takes the same cup but as she turns to give it to Sanger Man, her Dick Tracy White Magic Poison Detecting necklace turns black indicating that real poison has been added to the cup. (Master Raymond and his slight of hand?). Sanger Man knows what the necklace means because he has always wanted one for himself. He knows his number is up and he has to drink the poison. He insults Claire saying she sucks Satan’s Cock in French and a tear runs down his cheek because she will never do that to him. He drinks the poison and croaks almost instantly. The King tells Master Raymond to “get out of Dodge” and never come back. Louis escorts Claire from the Star Chamber.
Thinking she has done the favor wanted, Claire asks if the King will free Jamie. The King replies that he will, but only after she does him another special favor. She looks back at the Duke laying dead on the floor and wonders “What was that? Chopped liver?” to herself. Louie takes her to the bed, impales her, thrusts 5 times, and says Jamie is free. Voila! Claire leaves the King’s chamber unimpressed, but grabs the damn orange on the way out!
In the next scene we see Jamie, home from the Bastille, walking slowly up the stairs to Claire. (I think he is really is afraid of La Dame Blanche.) Other than a short beard, he doesn’t look too bad! Claire looks at him like he is slime under her feet. He follows her into the sitting room. He asks her what the baby was, a boy or a girl? Claire tells him about Baby Faith. Then we see a flashback when she was allowed to hold her dead baby. It is the cutest dead baby I ever saw (but it did resemble the dead baby she found in the fairy tree in Season 1 without a hat). She holds it and sings to it. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house, when her friend, Louise, took the dead baby from her.
Claire tells Jamie she was wrong for hating him. It was her fault. She was the one who asked him to do more than any man could do by asking him not to kill Randall. She was the one who raced through town to stop the duel. She should have focused on the family she has now, not the past. He tells her he already forgave her for anything she’d ever do. She asks him to take her home to Scotland!
Episode 208:
The Frasers are welcomed back to Lallybroch and their idyllic days fall into the routine activities of the clan. Jenny and Jamie are particularly close, like always.
Claire is dressed in her dark Scottish garb and one has to wonder,”What happened to all those silk gowns? Did she sell them on E-Bay?” The first potato crop comes in and everyone celebrates by having mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, potatoes au gratin, french fries, hash browns, fried potatoes, boiled potatoes, scalloped potatoes and potato soup until they start to look like wait…wait…potatoes! (By the way, who wants to guess how long since any of those actors really had a potato?)
The mail arrives one day and Jamie finds out the Bonnie Prince has sent out a letter to everyone and their brother declaring his father the true and rightful King. He says Clan leadership have signed this in support of him. Of course, Jamie’s name has been forged to the letter which officially makes him a traitor to the crown. Since he has the name, he has the game, so he decides to go to Lord Lovat to get more men to fight in the Jacobite rebellion. Of course, Jenny and Jamie argue. Claire asks, “Who is Lord Lovat?” They both respond that he is their Grandfather. Then they argue until it comes out that Jamie’s father was a bastard, recognized by Lord Lovat, but a bastard nonetheless. They argue so much, Jenny can’t unbend her elbows. Later, despite all of this, Claire and Jamie get it on while they still have a bed to sleep in.
Then Jamie does the cutest thing in all of DIA. Claire wakes up and he has left their bed. She finds him downstairs talking Gaelic to Jenny’s baby late in the night. Melt your heart!
Claire and Jamie head out to Lord Lovat’s castle. If I had known what was going to happen, I would have jumped up from my chair and screamed, “Turn around! There’s big trouble ahead and you don’t know it because it’s not in the book!” But I didn’t and they didn’t. Jamie takes Claire to meet the Host with the Least, Lord Lovat. While waiting for him, they run into Colum MacKenzie, who is there to meet with the clans about the Jacobite Rebellion. Claire greets Colum coldly, because she still thinks he caused her to be tried as a witch. Colum tap dances (figuratively, have you seen those legs?) around to put blame on others!
Jamie knows talking Lovat into helping will be twice as hard now. As nasty as everyone said Lord Lovat was, they didn’t do him justice. Claire worried about getting cleaned up before she meets him, but she would have been better served to roll in the pig sty. She would have matched him! After he insults Jamie’s whole Famn Damily, he kicks Claire out of the discussion.
Here it comes….the scary part that wasn’t in the book. Claire is getting some much needed fresh air, when she runs into LEGHAIR! She tells Claire that she came here with Colum to do his wash and help out. Leghair gets on her knees and begs her forgiveness. She tells her that she has changed. She trying to get right with God. Apparently Mrs. Fitz, Leghair’s grandmother, ripped her a new one when she found out what she did to Claire. Mrs. Fitz made Leghair vow to be a better person through kindness and good works, or she would make sure Leghair rots in hell forever. All of this is the writers’ attempt to get the story back on track, because of the “Goosebumpy Bewb Baring” in Season 1.
I already addressed this Leghair scene in 212 in a prior blog so I won’t belabor it: https://thechurchofheughanology.com/2016/06/01/which-shark-should-we-jump-they-all-look-alike/
Suffice it to say, Leghair is back and she’s looking for forgiveness and a little bit of Jamie loving if she can get him to notice her! Claire isn’t in the mood to forgive her, it ends in a stalemate. Jamie takes Claire to dinner that evening as long as she promises not to talk. Lord Lovat doesn’t mind a bit of beauty at the table, but he doesn’t want to hear a woman’s voice! (I truly believe the only way he had any children was rape or artificial insemination.) Jamie tries to convince the others to take an active roll in the Jacobite rebellion. Colum argues for neutrality, and Lovat doesn’t say nay or yea! Claire is dutifully silent, but she has kicked Jamie so many times under the table, he’s limping!
During the dinner, Lovat’s youngest son, Simon, makes some comments but his father humiliates him and his opinions. (Big surprise! He’s not a very nurturing father.) After dinner, the Frasers lament that Simon has no backbone. If they could get him to support the rebellion, Jamie could get his foot in the door, with the Lovat Clan. Claire has an idea. She noticed Simon was crushing on Leghair. Claire can use Leghair to entice Simon to stand up for what he believes. The next day, Claire finds Leghair doing the wash and sniffing it to make sure it’s clean. Claire asks if she sniffing Jamie’s shirt, and Leghair doesn’t deny it, but assures Claire she did no harm. After clarifying that Simon will not touch her vaginally, Leghair agrees to boost his ego so she can get back in the Frasers’ good graces. (Well, she really doesn’t care about Claire.)
Claire takes Simon for a walk so they can “run into” Leghair, accidentally. While they talk, Claire goes into the church and finds Maisri. She is the resident Seer, whom Claire witnessed Lord Lovat throwing out of his room. It seems that Lord Lovat is superstitious, but doesn’t always like to hear what she has to say. Maisri tells Claire that she saw an executioner with a sharp blade getting ready to decapitate Lord Lovat. Then Leghair yells for Claire. Apparently Simon ran off when Leghair tried to get him to look at her bewbs, after Claire specifically said not to use her girlish charms. ( I guess you can take the girl out of the slut, but you can’t take the slut out of the girl). Claire hopes that some of what Leghair said will help Simon to stand up for what he believes, if he’s not too traumatized.
Meanwhile Jamie is meeting with Lord Lovat. He discovers that Lord Lovat wants Lallybroch, if he supports the rebellion. Jamie says that he can’t have it. Lovat says that if he can’t have Lallybroch, how about Claire’s honor (meaning he’d have the clan guys show her the only thing for which she was made. Is that a Clan Bang?) Jamie pulls the La Dame Blanche card. He scares Lovat by telling him Claire will turn their privates to dust if they try to have their way with her!
At dinner that night, Colum is pushing Lord Lovat to be neutral in this fight, but Simon stands up bravely while looking at Leghair, and tells Colum and Lord Lovat, that they are just old men. He says, “It’s time for everyone to stand up for Scotland.” He pledges himself to the battle. The old man decides he will sign the neutrality agreement instead of committing to the war. Just then Claire goes into La Dame Blanche mode and tells Lovat the future (as Maisri saw for him).
They leave the next day to go join Bonnie Prince Charlie’s army. Simon goes with them. In the courtyard, Jamie says good bye to Colum. Even though they disagree, it is evident that the two respect each other. Then Claire asks Jamie to thank Leghair and she’ll tell him why later. He goes over to her, and says, “I don’t know why, but Claire says I have to thank you. So, thank you.” Leghair blushes and giggles. She rides off in a wagon with Colum and his dirty laundry.
Jamie, Claire, Simon and the men of Lallybroch head out, they notice a line of men standing on a ridge. Simon tells him they are Lovat clansmen. Lord Lovat tells Simon to go see to his men. He tells Jamie that he is riding both sides of the fence and he can only win. But he still wants Lallybroch. He doesn’t mention any lusting for Claire aka La Dame Blanche.
Everything was excellent in these episodes except for the Leghair scenes. In my opinion, the time could have been used for Fraser sex. But you already know my take on that. I hope you’re having fun with these blog posts. If not, why are you reading this?
Episodes 209 to 212 will be coming soon to a Church of Heughanology near you!
The Church of Heughanology 